


Let Me Down Gently

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Memory Loss, Post-Episode: 2016 Xmas The Return of Doctor Mysterio, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9235610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: In the aftermath of the Harmony Shoal incident, the Doctor is called back to their offices for a UNIT-led debriefing. When he arrives, he finds there's someone there to see him - more specifically, a five foot two someone with enormous brown eyes...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came about following _The Return of Doctor Mysterio_ , more specifically the line: "Wait here. I'm putting a call in to Osgood." Enjoy, and happy new year!

“Why do we have to go back?” Nardole whined, his face twisted into an approximation of a scowl, or the nearest that he could manage to such a sour expression. He didn’t have it in him to be truly petulant or negative, but still the Doctor felt irked by his companion’s displeasure. 

“Because I have to be debriefed,” he explained curtly, flicking switches as he circled the console, avoiding looking at his companion as he did so. “Because they’re kind of like my boss, and I have to come when called… mostly.”

“You don’t seem the type to have a boss,” Nardole mused, earlier attempts at complaining forgotten in the face of this new nugget of information about the Time Lord. “You dislike authority far too much to take orders from someone sat behind a desk.”

“Someone _sat behind a desk_ , yes. Someone with field experience… well,” the Time Lord activated the handbrake and brought them down at their destination, dusting down his coat self-consciously and adjusting his cuffs. “Couldn’t take orders from someone who had no idea what it was like out here. I’d probably end up taking them on a side-trip and getting arrested for kidnap. Weirder things have happened.”

“I don’t think I want to know,” Nardole grimaced, following the Doctor to the doors and stepping outside into the New York offices of Harmony Shoal. The building was overrun with squadrons of black-clad soldiers with rifles, and he took an instinctive step closer to the Doctor, unsettled by the weapons and the aggressive barking of orders that was occurring at semi-regular intervals. “Well…” he began, for want of anything else to say and in the hopes of prompting the Doctor into making conversation. “This seems-” 

“Ah, there she is,” the Doctor grinned and took a couple of steps forwards, raising his hand in greeting as he called to a blonde woman: “Kate!”

Several desks over, Kate Stewart looked up and returned his grin, her expression turning only fractionally sour as she noticed his companion at his side. 

“She doesn’t look happy to see me,” Nardole fretted, his hands twisting together as he worried. “That’s… that’s not good, I don’t like people getting that face when they see me. Not really my thing, much prefer happy faces.” 

“She’s probably just worried you haven’t passed the correct security protocols,” the Doctor assured him, continuing to stride towards Kate with determination and paying little attention to Nardole as he walked. “UNIT tend to get weird about these things, it takes them ages to make sure the people I travel with aren’t mass-murdering psychopaths.” 

“And even then,” came an unfamiliar voice from his left. “We don’t always get that part right.” 

The Doctor turned towards the speaker, his brow furrowing in consternation as he took in the petite brunette woman who had spoken. Dressed in a dark, seemingly-standard-issue trench coat, her hands thrust deep into her pockets, she was appraising him with a pair of wide, dark brown eyes and a half-smirk, one eyebrow arched maddeningly as she surveyed him with a measured gaze.

“Have we met?” he asked, feeling a faint tug at his memory as he looked her up and down, and watching as her expression flickered fractionally in response to his words. 

“Very funny,” she quipped, enunciating each letter with perfect diction. “I know I’m an inconvenient little truth, but I thought this might be of some comfort to you. It’s not like I haven’t had the practice.”

“The practice at what?” the Doctor asked, squinting at her and watching her face fall in the wake of his confusion. “Being tiny? Smirking?”

“Doctor, this isn’t funny,” the woman repeated, her expression hardening as she looked up at him with a quiet fury that disquieted him. “Whatever joke you think you’re playing, stop it. Right now. Just knock it off.”

“I’m not… who are you?” the Time Lord snapped, unsettled by her anger towards him. “Why would you bring me any comfort? I don’t know you.” 

“Doctor, it’s me.” 

“It’s who?” 

“ _Me_.” 

“Who the hell is ‘me’? I know of someone else by that name, but you don’t match the description, other than being somewhat vertically challenged” 

There was a soft _thwick_ and the woman shifted into a more familiar form: still brunette, but taller and with her hair pulled back into a sensible ponytail, a pair of taped-together glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. A scarf of impossible length was wrapped around her neck, accompanied by a motley collection of mismatched clothing topped off by a leather jacket. 

“ _Oh_ ,” the Doctor realised, his face splitting into a smile as he recognised her at last. “Hi, Osgood. That answers a convenient question.”

“Which is…?”

“’Which one are you, human or Zygon?’”

“You’re being weird.” 

“Says the shape-shifting Zygon with an affinity for my past wardrobe.” 

“It’s not my fault she – and you – have awful taste in clothing,” the Zygon snapped, rolling her eyes at him in a distinctly impatient manner. “Why are you-” 

Kate stepped up to the unlikely trio with an apologetic expression, pulling the Zygon away from the Time Lord by the back of her jacket. “Doctor,” she began in a gentle voice, her eyes downcast. “I’m so sorry about Osgood-slash-Bonnie.” 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, scoffing in response to her seemingly unfounded pity. “Why is everyone looking at me so strangely? Have I grown another head without noticing? I know I brought a friend but that’s pretty much my MO now. It’s nothing new when I turn up with a pal, is it?” 

“I just thought… Bonnie might have upset you,” Kate turned her attention to the Zygon and adopted a chastising expression. “What the hell is your problem?! You know what happened, you know why what you did was inappropriate. Honestly, why would you do that to him? You know what he’s lost!” 

“I was trying to help!” Bonnie argued, all but stamping her foot with petulance as she did so. “I thought maybe it would offer him some comfort if he could… I don’t know, hug me and pretend I was her, or whatever else it is that Time Lords do. But instead…” 

“Sorry, who are we talking about?” the Doctor interjected with confusion, not understanding why the two women were fighting. “That little woman that you were when I arrived? Should I have recognised her?”

“Doctor,” pain flickered across Kate’s face as she spoke. “Doctor, do you really mean to tell me…” 

There was another _thwick_ and Bonnie took on her first form once more, kohl-rimmed eyes as wide as saucers as she looked up at the Time Lord with sadness and finished Kate’s sentence. “Do you not know me? Her?” 

“Who’s ‘her’?!” the Doctor snapped, losing his patience and slamming his fist down on an adjacent desk, causing his companions to jump. “I don’t recognise her, why would… wait.” He paused, squinting at her as he concentrated on her face. “You were the waitress.” 

“What waitress?”

“You were the waitress in the diner I went to. You brought me back my TARDIS! Thank you, I was wondering where I’d left it.” 

“Urm,” Bonnie stammered, taken aback by the news. “I mean, if I did then that’s great, but that wasn’t who I was thinking of.” 

“So who are you?” he demanded to know, feeling his temper beginning to fray in response to her refusal to address the issue. “Who are you if not her? Why are you all looking at me like I’ve missed something fundamental?”

“Because you _are_ missing something fundamental,” Kate said quietly, her expression unreadable. “And you’ve got a new companion, I understand that, but I don’t understand why you’re pretending that it never happened. I know you must be hurting and I know that things are difficult for you, especially with the depth of what the two of you had… but Doctor, this isn’t helping anyone. You need to face up to things.”

“What isn’t helping anyone?” he asked in bewilderment, before things clicked into place and he abruptly understood who Kate was referring to. “I mean, I miss her, of course I miss her, she was my wife.” 

“She… what?” Kate blinked in shock, her mouth falling open as she contemplated his words. “You two…”

“Of course we were married!” the Doctor retorted impatiently, irritated by her slowness to grasp the concept. “I thought that was common enough knowledge.” 

“Well, urm…” Kate cleared her throat, still looking taken aback. “That explains a lot, actually. But still. Aren’t you going to acknowledge Bonnie?” 

“Why would I acknowledge her? She has nothing to do with my dead wife.” 

“But she… _oh,_ ” Kate’s face fell as she realised who he had meant. “River. You mean River.” 

“Well of course he means River,” Nardole interjected, tired of being a passive observer and deciding to contribute to the conversation as much as he was able. “She _was_ his wife. Why? Who did you mean?” 

“Clara,” Bonnie said quietly, looking up at the Time Lord from under her eyelashes. “The first face his face saw. _This_ face.”

“Would that be Clara _Oswald_?” Nardole asked, as the Doctor blinked in bafflement, the name stirring something deep in his memory. “Because… I know her.” 

“How…”

“Well, I know her name. I keep finding school books of hers on the TARDIS. They’re _everywhere_ , there seems to be a whole stack of the things in the library. She can’t have been very old, look how tiny she was. What was she? Teenager?”

“She was a teacher,” Kate explained, looking between the Doctor and Nardole, the latter of whom was being surveyed in shock by the former. “She taught English to secondary school kids back in London. And apparently this idiotic Time Lord doesn’t remember her, despite the fact she’s dead. What a bloody insult to her memory. I’m sorry, Doctor, but how could you do this? How dare you forget her? I don’t know what you’ve done or what game you’re playing at, but it isn’t funny. This isn’t funny, it’s an insult to all that she was. First you missed the funeral and now you turn up here with a new companion acting like nothing’s even happened, like she was nothing to you, and talking about your wife like she was all that you had? I won’t have it.” 

“River _was_ all I had,” the Doctor mumbled, wrong-footed in the face of Kate’s righteous anger. “And now she’s…”

“She’s dead, yes, but she’s a data ghost. One that you can upload to the TARDIS matrix and visit to your heart’s content, whereas Clara’s dead and gone and you can’t ever see her again but somehow your memory of her has just… I don’t know. Erased itself, maybe? Wiped itself from your brain? Damn you, you bloody fool. Damn you, you loved her and now you’ve just forgotten her like she meant nothing! How dare you?” 

“I _loved_ her?” the Doctor yelped, horrified by the revelation that he had loved someone he barely remembered. “How… what?” 

“Now, come on,” Nardole reasoned, offering Kate the closest to a withering look he could manage. “He loved his wife.” 

“I’m sure he did,” Kate said through gritted teeth. “I’m sure to god he did, but he loved Clara too and I had to watch the two idiots being oblivious to each other’s feelings, like they didn’t think the sun shone from each other’s arses and they weren’t each other’s reasons to go on. I had to put up with that and I never thought to set them up, and now she’s dead and he’s forgotten her, and the only bloody people left to mourn her can’t even go out to see the stars she loved, because we’re stuck fighting his battles on Earth.” 

“Clara…” the Doctor said thoughtfully, half-listening to Kate as he mulled over the name that she had supplied him with. “Clara Oswald?” 

“Yes, you moron,” Kate snapped, her eyes burning with unshed tears. “Clara Oswald. Saver of worlds. Saver of your miserable arse on more than one occasion.”

“Cybermen,” the Doctor recalled, suddenly remembering a graveyard full of the metal men. “There were Cybermen.”

“So you remember?”

“No,” he said with a sad shrug, looking down at the floor as he concentrated on her name and what she must have meant to him. “There’s a dark hole where she was, but I remember around it. I remember Cybermen and the Orient Express and an Ice Warrior. I remember ghosts, and the Daleks, but I don’t remember her. Can’t. Not so much as-” 

“Not so much as her face,” Bonnie finished, stepping in front of him and smiling with lingering sadness. “Not so much as her smile.” 

“But I guess… I guess now I do,” he returned her smile, reaching up and cupping her cheek with one hand, feeling the skin warm under his palm as she looked up at him with absolute trust. “Kate, I’d explain, but…” 

“Hang on,” Nardole interrupted, ruminating on the revelations of the previous few minutes, and the Doctor coughed guiltily, taking his hand from Bonnie’s face. “You mean there was someone _before_ Professor Song?” 

“Urm,” the Doctor blushed as he realised he had to make a confession. “Yes, there was. Well. Sort of… before, during and after.”

“How…”

“Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey,” the Time Lord made a non-committal face that he hoped explained matters sufficiently. “Clara was in my life ever since Gallifrey.” 

“But you…” the human blustered, lost for words. “But _River_!” 

“Yes, but River,” the Doctor mumbled, sighing deeply as he realised the cause for Nardole’s anger. “That’s why nothing… that’s why I couldn’t…” 

“You’re awful.” Nardole barbed, turning and stomping back into the TARDIS before slamming the doors behind him a touch more theatrically than was necessary. The Doctor winced, knowing he would need to defuse the situation upon his return to the time machine and dreading the prospect. 

“He seems…” Kate paused, searching for the right adjective with care. “Nice?” 

“He’s a good chap,” the Doctor countered, feeling a sense of loyalty to his companion regardless of his present animosity. “Mostly. Devoted to River though, so this news is a bit… difficult for him.” 

“Are you going to explain what happened?” Bonnie asked, looking up at him with curiosity. “To you? If you can’t remember Clara then it must have been pretty serious. We need to know you’re OK. Check you’re not going to go loco on us.” 

“Look, I will explain,” he assured her, stepping forward and embracing her out of instinct, feeling her freeze up in surprise and then relax in his arms. “I promise I will explain _everything_. Right after I deal with my companion’s terrible mood, to try and make my living situation somewhat less tense.”

“Doctor, are you sure this is a good idea?” Kate asked, concern evident in her tone. “I mean, don’t you need…”

“I need to not be alone,” he told her quietly, his eyes boring into hers as he spoke. “That much I am certain of. I’ll explain, Kate, I promise you that. Back in London. Back when I’ve got things under control. And without a doubt, back when _her_ face will be gone from my mind again.” He chucked Bonnie under the chin and smiled a sad smile, knowing that he would not be able to keep her image in his memory. “Thank you, though.”

“Any time.” 

“I’ll see you both around,” he promised as he turned back to the TARDIS, feeling Bonnie’s face fade from his mind as he did so, and he began to trudge back to the time machine, his head bowed as he fought back tears he didn’t fully understand. “Clara…” he hummed under his breath, enjoying how the word rolled off his tongue. 

A fleeting recollection of a whispered _I love you_. 

A stolen kiss in the dark. 

A memory of her laughing as she spun around an unfamiliar console.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and the memories were gone.


End file.
